Seeking Help with Teaching My Son Math

my little boy is 6 and loves math too! we give him a lot of word problems and he is able to figure them out such as, "our new baby was 3 months old yesterday and there are about 30 days a month, how many days old is he?" he answered 91 days very quickly! Also, yesterday i made cookies, and there are 12 squares of dough in a pack. i told him i cut all of them in half, so how many cookies did i make, and he said 24. he is very good at adding and subtracting, even negative numbers like what is 7-12 and he'll say -5. when he was younger he had a leapster and i remember he had a spongebob math game on it and learned a lot that way without even knowing it. so i'd suggest maybe a leapster, oh monopoly junior is a great board game to play as a family with adding money and all, and also giving him word problems in everyday life. good luck and try to keep it fun for him. my son loves showing people his skill, which gives him confidence in that area.

First of all, my question would be how old is your son?
If he is between 5-6 then using manipulatives is quite all right because when he enters public school in pre-k and kinder they use manipulatives to teach math...it is called hands on learning. If he is between 7-8, which is first and second grade, teachers tend to lay off the manipulatives and start teaching children mental math. That is doing the adding in their head. I could go on and on, I could help you more if I knew how old he was.
Just in case your wondering, yes, I am a teacher.

Wal Mart has some learning books in their children's book section that include math for different ages, maybe something there would be helpful. Also, there are websites to help. One is www.aaamath.com. You could google to find more. Encouragement is wonderful, so it's great that you are interested in his gift.

Flash cards, flash cards, flash cards! LOL. My son also wants to do more math and he loves the flash cards. You can get them at Walmart.:)

How old is your son? I would suggest just jumping into it. You will be surprised how quickly he might catch on. If you've done addition with manipulatives, then show him a simple problem, like 1 + 1. Say something like, "If I have one bear (point to the "1") and then I add another bear (point to the other "1") how many bears do I have now?" If he gets it, great! If he doesn't, try putting the "bears" or manipulatives over the numbers. That way he'll see that the numbers actually represent the manipulatives. After a while, make sure he understands what a "plus sign" is and what it means. Also introduce the "equal sign" to him. I am a teacher and I have come across some great websites. Type in "Kindergarten math lessons" in google and see what pops up. I hope this helps.